Jesus Loves the Little Children... Doesn't He?

We all know the Sunday school chorus, right?  Jesus Loves the Little Children…[i]

                

                Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world
                red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight,
                Jesus loves the little children of the world.

This is the image of Jesus that many of us, most of us in this room, have been raised with. It’s warm and comforting. This is the kind and loving Jesus that we’ve been taught and that we expect to find when we read the gospels.  It’s not altogether wrong, but it’s not exactly what we find in the gospel of Mark. In fact, the image of Jesus that we find in today’s passage (Mark 7: 24 – 37) is difficult to understand.  He confounds our expectations and ruins that treasured little chorus for us.

Jesus spent the majority of his career as a wandering teacher and healer in the green hills of Galilee, healing the sick, comforting the distressed, and proclaiming the imminence of the Kingdom of God to a Jewish audience.  He traveled from town to town and village to village, teaching in the synagogues, driving out demons, giving sight to the blind, causing the deaf to hear, and even raising the dead. 

Galilee had, at one point in time, become heavily populated by Gentile peoples. But in the years since the victories of the Maccabees the region had become more Jewish than not once again.  Still, it was surrounded like an island in a Gentile sea.  To the North and East was Syria, to the West was Phoenicia.  To the south was Samaria.  Surrounded as they were, the Jews of Galilee were proud of their heritage.

But here in this passage, Jesus suddenly and inexplicably leaves the Jewish hills of Galilee and takes his disciples[ii]  on a trip to the coastal city of Tyre in Phoenicia – to Gentile territory. We don’t get to hear what the disciples thought about this trip; Mark doesn’t tell us.  So I have to wonder what they might have been thinking.  Gentiles weren’t to be trusted.  The rabbis encouraged Jewish travelers who, for whatever reason, absolutely had to travel through Gentile territories, to be wary of leaving their animals unattended at Gentile inns because Gentiles “were suspected of practicing bestiality.” [iii]  Travelling businessmen were encouraged to not enter Gentile towns, but rather, to conduct their business outside of town.  Gentiles were uncouth and savage outsiders, and Jews were encouraged to avoid interaction with them.

But now, without explaining his reasons for the journey, Jesus has made his way to Tyre and went into a house.  He didn’t want to see anyone, or to be seen by anyone.  This happens quite often in Mark, actually.  We frequently see Jesus, in Mark’s gospel, leaving the crowds and his disciples to be alone.  So he’s traveled to the coastal city of Tyre and locked himself away from the world.  Nevertheless, word got out that Jesus was in town.  People from Tyre had heard about Jesus before.  Many of them had, themselves, traveled from Tyre to Galilee in order to hear Jesus teach and to have their illnesses cured. [iv] Now, they discover, Jesus – the wandering preacher and itinerant healer - had come to their town.  He could not keep his presence a secret.

One woman, in particular, made her presence known.  She intruded into Jesus’ seclusion in order to beg for the life of her daughter, and Mark goes to some length to make sure that we understand who, and what she was. She was a woman, a Greek woman born in Syrian Phoenicia…  Mark wants his reader to understand, without question, that the woman was not Jewish.  She was one of the unclean, uncivilized Gentiles.   And now this woman… this Gentile woman… comes bursting into Jesus’ alone time to beg him to drive the demons from her little daughter.   Can you hear her? Please sir, please, have mercy, please heal my little daughter.  She is begging.

Now we have already seen Jesus acting with compassion for precious daughters.  In chapter five Jesus raised Jairus’ little daughter, and healed the woman who’d been bleeding for twelve years.  Jesus called her “my daughter.”  But these were Jewish daughters.   When the Syro-Phoenician woman -the gentile woman- begs Jesus to save her daughter, Jesus answers, “First let the children eat all they want, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”

This is not Jesus loves the little children…

Jesus doesn’t act with the compassion we expect. Jesus doesn’t respond with love.  Instead Jesus compares the woman and her daughter to “dogs.”  This was a common epithet levied by Jews against their gentile neighbors.  They were dogs and swine, not worthy to be taught the torah, and not worth Jesus’ healing.  For those of us raised to understand that “Jesus loves the little children” this comes as something of a shock. But in all reality – this was the prevailing Jewish opinion about Gentiles.  The Jewish people, by nature of their covenant with God, were his special children.  The gentiles were outsiders.  They were unclean. They were dogs.

Now some commentators, who are rightly horrified by this calloused and uncaring Jesus, point out that the word that is translated as “dogs” actually means “little dogs.”  This, they say, softens the blow. See? Awww puppies…  But dogs were not kept as house pets.  And they weren’t cute.  They were savaging beasts, covered in mange and flies.   And it, in no way, softens the blow to say “little dogs.”  It’s still a horrible thing to say.

Others, still trying to get around this horrible depiction of Jesus, suggest that Jesus was using a particular teaching technique called “periastic irony” – that is, Jesus –the teacher- said precisely what he did not mean, with the expectation that his student would be able to understand and respond by correcting him.   This is, perhaps, a plausible explanation.  I think this is perhaps what Mark, the gospel author, is doing with the story, but I’m not convinced that Jesus is being ironic here.

Irony is difficult.  It’s easy to miss – because on the surface, what is said sounds perfectly normal. The humor or instructiveness of irony is in the ability of the audience to understand the hidden, underlying meaning – which is usually the complete opposite of what is being said in the surface layer.  A devoted and practiced disciple would probably be able to recognize and respond to Jesus’ instructive use of irony, but would this woman have been able to understand?  She’s a stranger to him.  Even allowing that she may have been one of those who traveled from Tyre to Galilee to hear Jesus speak, would she have been so familiar with his teaching techniques as to recognize and respond?  And, consider that she’s coming to him in extreme desperation and fear.  I can’t see her responding this way.

Jesus says to her, “it’s not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”  And this beautiful woman replies with her own riposte, “But sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” 

This woman, this gentile woman, this woman from Syrian Phoenicia turns the tables on Jesus and he suddenly recognizes her as something more than a “little dog.”  She becomes human.  “Because you have said this you may go; the demon has left your daughter.”   Just that - a word from his lips and the demon is gone – but our dilemma persists.

What are we to do with this Jesus who doesn’t appear to love all the little children of the world?  There are at least two different ways that we can understand this story – neither is easy.

First, if this story represents an accurate telling of an authentic historical event – then Jesus did give voice to the persistent Jewish prejudice that gentiles were unclean and unworthy.  This picture of Jesus will be difficult for us to accept, however.  Most of us are very used to considering Jesus in his divine nature.  We understand him as perfect, as holy, as pure.  But we also have to remember that Jesus also had a human nature as well.  He is truly and properly God and truly and properly man.  And as a man – as a human, he is subject to the same vulnerabilities that we are.

If we remember that Jesus was fully human in every way (without neglecting that he was also divine in every way…) we will remember that he had to learn and to grow and to mature.  And perhaps part of that learning and growing and maturing happened in this story. He overcame the prejudice of his culture and became the Jesus we have been raised to expect – the Jesus who loves the children of the world, no matter where they come from

The second way to understand this difficult story is to accept the idea that Mark, in writing this gospel, was not writing a modern history or biography of Jesus.  He was writing a gospel – a theological document.   And in doing so he felt free to take artistic liberties the stories he’d heard about Jesus and to rework them in such a way as to make this incident a particularly poignant story for his gentile audience. 

It is largely believed by New Testament scholars that Mark wrote his gospel shortly before or shortly after the failed Jewish rebellion against Rome to a mainly gentile audience.  We see some evidence of that in the fact that Mark frequently includes parenthetical statements to explain Jewish customs to his readers.    The inclusion of gentiles into the worshipping community was the paramount issue for the first century church.  And the story of Jesus’ confrontation with the woman in Tyre, and with the predominant racist attitude would be of comfort and guidance to those Christian communities struggling to understand how and why to include these gentile dogs into their fellowship.

Either we are forced to reconsider and adjust our ideas about the human nature of Jesus – or we are forced to reconsider and adjust our ideas about how the gospel texts were composed and transmitted to us.[v]  But, in the end, either interpretation leads us back to confronting ourselves.  Do we harbor any undiagnosed prejudices?  Do we dismiss the pain and suffering of others merely because they are not like us?  Do we ignore those who are different from us?   Do we perpetuate disparaging stereotypes about people?  Do we despise or fear Liberals or Conservatives, the Elderly, the Mentally Ill, Muslims, Hindus, Atheists….or any other group, race, culture, creed, or sexual orientation?

It can be difficult to grow beyond the prejudices of our culture.  But we must or we’ll never really know the Jesus who does, indeed, love the little children of the world.

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[i]  Words by Clare Herbert Woolston (1856–1927) Inspired by Matthew 19:14.  Some versions of the song change the words slightly by inserting the color "brown" between "red" and "yellow."

[ii] Though they aren’t specifically mentioned in this passage, Mark tells us that the disciples were there “in those days” (Mark 8:1).

[iii] Quoted in Heszer, Catherine Jewish Travel in Antiquity  Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, Germany. 2011. Page 301.  Granted, these thoughts from the Mishnah were written in the years after Jesus, but they can be taken as illustrative – though not universal.  Not all of the rabbis spoke of the Gentiles this way. 

[iv] Mark 3:8

[v] As with everything, there are varying shades of interpretation along this spectrum.